‘You heard of the demonstration?’
‘Yes, I have already had a full report. You need not trouble yourself.’
‘Did you suggest using a child for the experiment?’
‘Yes.’ He continued to stare at the two-headed baby. ‘Do you know, Crowther, I think the vegetation around this little monster’s feet is actually injected lung tissue! Is that a kidney stone? My Lord, what imagination. Have you ever made anything like this?’
Crowther felt his mouth set in a thin line. ‘It is a work of Frederick Ruysch, I believe. And no, I do not build little tableaux.’ Manzerotti shrugged. ‘So the mask is drugged in some way,’ Crowther continued. ‘How did you know? Can you identify the substance?’
‘Here is an instance. I am sure when next I meet her, Mrs Westerman will want to ask me again of my general purpose here. If she can bring herself to do so, she will enquire as to the personalities and scandals of the court, then stare out of the window and wonder until her imagination proffers scenarios which her mind considers worthy of pursuit. You, meanwhile, latch onto facts. Hard, nuggety little facts. She is the artist, you are the craftsman. On balance, I doubt you’d have the imagination to create a horrid little tableau like this.’ Crowther did not reply. ‘The symptoms Mr Clode displayed, and the manner they came on suggested a certain substance to me. Something of which I have heard reports, but never encountered in the flesh, as it were. The fact that the rest of the party remained unaffected suggested the manner in which it was delivered. Do not blame yourself. I came to Maulberg from the south, reaching the border before you and travelling a little further before I reached court. I therefore had longer to study my supply of papers. I am sure you would have realised the mask was the source of Clode’s confusion before long.’
‘The substance, Manzerotti. How did you know it? What do you know of it?’
‘I have made the study of drugs and poisons a pastime in the last years.’ He paused and lifted one immaculate eyebrow. ‘I am surprised a man who spends his time dissecting the dead curls his lip at such an interest, but of course, how foolish of me. Poisons are evil, sneaking and covert, as I am evil. Is that how you figure it?’
‘I do not style myself a theologian, Manzerotti, to speak of good and evil.’
‘Yet you are, in a way. I have no doubt that in your time investigating violent death in the company of Mrs Westerman, you have delivered any number of stirring speeches on the greater good and the absolute value of truth.’ Crowther scowled. ‘I thought you had. You must realise that even a monster such as myself can contribute to that greater good when it suits me, such as giving Mrs Westerman a little hint about the mask. Did you know there is a devil hidden in the organ of the cathedral in Leuchtenstadt? When the player pulls a certain level, he pops out to play upon his own little set of pipes, forced to sing the Good Lord’s praises whether he wills it or no. Does the analogy please you?’
‘Who arranged for those papers to be sent to you, Manzerotti? Who pulls the levers that control you? I suspect you function somewhat … independently.’
‘Perhaps. And like the little devil, sometimes I do not play exactly the tune my masters would wish.’ He seemed to brighten. ‘The composition of the poison on the mask I cannot swear to exactly, but I have thought it might owe its effects to the inclusion in the mix of a powder of one of the datura family.’
Crowther brought his cane down on the polished floor with a sharp rap. ‘Yet you encouraged the Duke to experiment on a child?’
‘Hardly encouraged! Suggested in passing, and do be careful of the parquet, Crowther, I understand it was imported at great expense. You do know something of the subject then? But not a great deal. I imagine your expertise stops at identifying arsenic poisoning, and the effects of strychnine. A plant of the datura family must be ingested to prove fatal. The child would only have been in danger if she had started licking the horrid thing. Besides, I do not think anyone was particularly fond of her …’
‘Manzerotti …’
The castrato’s eyes seemed to darken for a second. ‘I hope you are not going to deliver a lecture on the sanctity of human life, Crowther. Such hypocrisy would surely choke you.’
Crowther looked away.
When Manzerotti spoke his voice was light again. ‘Now, to cement this pleasant fellow-feeling between us, have you anything to tell me? Has your expertise anything to show for itself?’
Almost against his own will, Crowther found himself replying: ‘She was drowned.’
Manzerotti rapped his fingers lightly on the table-top. Crowther wondered if he were trying to make the skeleton dance.
‘Indeed? How fascinating! Are you certain? Of course you are, you would never speculate in front of me. No crime of passion this, then. Drowned on dry land … There’s something almost ritualistic about it. There, Gabriel, you see? We can rub along. Dressed as a Goddess of the Moon, and drowned. Interesting.’
‘Manzerotti, what are you doing here?’
‘Mrs Westerman’s spirit has entered the room at last!’ He opened his arms wide and lifted his chin. ‘Was it the use of your Christian name conjured her? No need to frown so. Why am I here? Do not trouble yourself. It is largely a question of politics, so too dull for Mrs Westerman and too abstract for you. As it happens, I believe Clode quite innocent, and am curious to know who is to blame for the death of Lady Martesen. I am happy to offer you my co-operation therefore, for the time being.’
Crowther looked into Manzerotti’s face and his mind filled with images of flowers that poisoned and rotted those unfortunate enough to consume them from within. ‘And if our interests diverge, Manzerotti?’
‘I will always dance to my own tune, Crowther. Your best hope is that they will not diverge. Now be not downcast, my friend! There cannot be many here who have the knowledge and wit to make that poison and who had the opportunity to treat the mask. Trust my expertise on that: whoever made that drug was instructed by an adept.’
Having Manzerotti address him in such warm and encouraging terms was as much as Crowther could bear, and without speaking again he turned away, and left him among the other exotics gathered together to amaze and confound in the Duke’s chamber of wonders.
III.4
Jacob Pegel was seated in the little square by the river with a book in his hands enjoying the spring sunshine and feeling generally content. The corner he had chosen was out of the general run, but easy enough to find, and found he was, by the succession of dirty-faced boys who formed his army. They came to him with paper offerings, and news of where the paper was collected from and to whom it was to go. Only one note was sealed carelessly enough to allow its contents to be read without leaving a sign it had been tampered with. Pegel noted down its contents — again nonsense groups of five letters — then in front of the nervous-looking messenger charged with carrying it from one side of the town to the other, dropped it at his feet, and stood on it squarely.
‘Sorry, son,’ he said to the boy, who was looking at him outraged. ‘But you get an extra shilling for it, in case they box your ears for dropping it.’
The boy took the coin and shrugged. It was a fair price for a beating. Pegel examined each letter carefully, made some notes, and then returned them to the messengers, who left with extra pennies in their hands. With their help Pegel traced the passage of the news of yesterday’s attack through the town. It fluttered through the Law Faculty, among half-a-dozen philosophers, and circled via a couple of the more prosperous tradesmen to the Vice Chancellor himself. It circled once more, then fell softly on the doorstep of a house not far from Pegel’s own, and the name on the note was not one with which Pegel was familiar. Dunktal. Interesting. The letters were all sealed, most with that curious mark of the owl. Pegel made more notes in the back of his book. Wrote down each name and direction and drew lines one to the other. By the middle of the afternoon he thought he had a fair idea of the names of Florian’s secret friends and, roughly, the hierarchy of the organisation. In his experience, bad news travels upwards like a bad smell. The small boys who chose to play outside Dunktal’s door reported that though the news had entered the house, it travelled no further forward. Jacob put his notebook into his pocket and sauntered down towards Herr Dunktal’s front door.